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We can't just smooth over Charlottesville and move on

Corpus Christi
Published 9:39 a.m. CT Aug. 18, 2017

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Isabel Araiza shouts with other protesters outside of Congressman Blake Farenthold's office in support of the Medicare For All March on Monday, July 24, 2017, in Corpus Christi.(Photo: Gabe Hernandez/Caller-Times)Buy Photo

Last weekend, I was glued to my TV and social media, horrified yet unable to turn away from the news out of Charlottesville. With 21st century technology, I watched the reverberations of domestic terrorism rooted in our country’s past. I saw the echoes of white entitlement that manifested itself in the expansion of slave codes during our colonial period, in the Three-Fifths Compromise, Fugitive Slave Acts, broken treaties and the Trail of Tears, in the resistance to Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, Operation Wetback, and Japanese Internment Camps, in restrictive covenants, red-lining, poll taxes, literacy tests, and separate-and-unequal education systems, in the dismantling of affirmative action, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the need for Black Lives Matter, and the Dakota Access Pipeline battle.

Those taken aback by the 45th president (and others) minimizing terrorism perpetrated by white supremacists and the spewing of false equivalencies overlook the fact that nearly 400 years of lawmaking have institutionalized white supremacist ideology. Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, traditions, norms, values, and the whitewashing of OUR history have maintained white supremacy and white privilege.

White supremacist ideology was in full display in Charlottesville, but the truth of the matter is that it is in full display in our community, too. The difference is that the symbols of white supremacy here are so much a part of the fabric of our community, many choose not to see the vulgarity and virulence in ourselves.

While people may not be carrying torches, or wearing swastika armbands, or chanting “Blood and Soil, one just needs to be in public spaces to see proud displays of Confederate flags on vehicles, t-shirts, belt buckles, and baseball caps. At the corner of Peoples and Broadway Streets, people admire the sculpture commissioned by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Daily, thousands drive past a Jefferson Davis Highway Marker at the foot of the Nueces Bay Causeway Bridge. Even Hamlin Middle School, with a Rebel soldier as a mascot, provides a regular affirmation of the Confederacy. White supremacist iconography abounds throughout the Body of Christ.

White supremacist goals — like the protecting of white privilege — can also be found in the policies and practices championed by our elected officials and business leaders. IF we wish for a more just society, “business as usual” in both the public and private sectors cannot continue. White supremacy echoes in the political/municipal boundaries we created, tax abatements we granted, and the lawsuits industries filed (or threaten to file) that starve our community of enough resources to ensure we have clean water, quality roads, public parks, adequately funded libraries and quality education.

White supremacy echoes in the building of family detention centers and private prisons, in the ignoring of colonia residents’ plights.

White supremacy echoes in the ways that moderates rationalize their support for each of the policies listed and many others. Frankly, well-respected, well-connected, well-dressed, well-mannered people do and support much of the work of the white supremacists’ agenda.

On April 16, 1963, in a letter from a Birmingham jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

If we wish to challenge white supremacist ideology, we must do more than condemn its most offensive displays; we must challenge policies disproportionately harming people of color. Fifty-four years after Dr. King wrote the letter in a Birmingham jail and days after the Charlottesville events and the 45th president’s statements, I wonder: What type of historical actor will I be? What type of actor will you be? Which part of the past will each of us echo?

Isabel Araiza is an associate professor of sociology at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.